


What Slinks Unseen

by TheLongDefeat



Series: Cat and Mouse [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Cat and Mouse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-20 07:42:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11916297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLongDefeat/pseuds/TheLongDefeat
Summary: He would call it a change of heart, if he had a heart.





	What Slinks Unseen

He thought about killing Molly right away but she was sort of funny, so he didn’t. And she had a cat. He was fond of cats - small and slinky and sniffing, like him. People sometimes said he was a rodent but rodents weren’t generally killers, not directly anyways, and so he was a cat. 

 

He debated walking like a cat right now but it was in public, even if it was at night, even if it was rainy - it was in public, and he had to be careful. So he walked like a human but he thought, as ever, like a cat. The yellow wash of the street lamps gobbled up his shadows as he went in and out of them. 

 

Her flat was around the next corner. He saw an old lady heaving a large rubbish bag to her bins in the street and watched the cords in her neck strain out, watched the blood pulsing feebly into her skull, and he thought about the vessels in her brain like dried up paper ready, with just a small push, to tear. He wondered if he leapt in front of her whether she might die, without even a touch, without even a word, and ooh, that would be fun, wouldn’t it? He laughed his small little laugh. But that was not his mission. Not tonight. Not tonight. Not yet.

 

He skipped a step as he marched up to her doorway and knock knock knocked. 

 

She appeared in the doorway like she wasn’t sure whether it was really her house. “Oh hullo Jim.”

 

“Hullo Molly,” he said, laughing his small laugh again because  _ really.  _ “How’re you?”

 

“Well, um,” she said, as eloquent he’d ever known to her to be. “Good, thank you, thanks. Come in.”

 

She went back to the kitchen, leaving the door wagging open like a tongue. He stepped in, wiped each foot once, removed his jacket and hung it up. Dusted his trousers. He swooped sideways into the kitchen and found her in a little curve over the stove, furiously stirring at some unfortunate attempt towards food. “Oh,” he said, “you shouldn’t have,” and meant it.

 

She shrugged and gave him a frantic smile. “No trouble, really. Please sit. Would you like some tea?”

 

“Oh, I’m fine,” he said but as soon as he said she looked so lost, useless as a broken doll, so he continued: “well, if it’s no trouble.”

 

“Oh no,” she said. “No trouble. I’ll put the kettle on.”

 

And god, but ordinary people were just  _ awful.  _ He fought down a smile that would be too shark-like and stooped onto one of the barstools squatting in a row beneath her countertop. “How was work?”

 

“Oh,” she said airily, “quite good. Had an interesting corpse in today, was in such an advanced state of putrefaction. It had been quite severely mutilated though, after death, and it made me think: what was the point? I mean, why work so hard to mutilate somebody who’s already dead if you’re only going to drop them in the water? Nobody will ever even see. Except me, of course, but I hardly count.” She stopped speaking, staring at the wall before her for a moment like it had spoken to her before turning to him with an unseemly flush on her face. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my.”

 

He considered. “Maybe it’s like any artist,” he said after a moment of enjoying her squirming. “Maybe they just do it for the joy of their art, not so that others will see it.”

 

Molly paused in her self-flagellation to look at him then and - well - it was - it was. Odd. He saw her mousiness in the frowning line of her shoulders, saw her stupidness in the flaccid droop of her mouth, saw her desperation in the fine tremor of her knobby fingers, but he also saw something in her eyes - her pale, unremarkable, ordinary eyes - which glinted, when touched by the light  _ just so _ , like steel. He tensed, and he could feel it, the rake of fur standing up along his spine, the whiskers bristling, the tail snapping like a whip, and he wondered if perhaps this was not a mouse he had cornered, not a mouse at all, not a  _ mouse _ but a  _ lion _ \- how  _ interesting  _ -

 

But he blinked and it was only Molly: stupid, boring, snivelling Molly. He sighed and slumped forward.

 

“Oh,” she said again, “that sounds like something Sherlock would say.”

 

He smiled his small cat smile, and she looked and saw him and smiled back.

 

~*~

 

She was - she was there, in front of him, inexplicably, as stupid as any human he’d ever had to endure. Her eyes beaded with tears, and her little mouth shook.    
  
“Oh Jim,” she said. “Hello.”

 

He thought, How the blazes did she see me? And so he said: “How the blazes did you see me?”

 

She pulled backwards, squinting sidelong as she tried to feel out his trick. “You were standing right here. What do you mean?”

 

Well, yes, of course this was true, but he was disguised. Did she not see that he was disguised? Honestly, had she no common decency at all? “I’m in disguise,” he said. 

 

She looked away from his face for the first time and looked at his clothes. Her eyes widened a little, and a few mealy tears dripped out. “Oh,” she said. “Yes you are.” Her eyes snapped back to his face and there - there - beneath the weak greying sun of London he saw it again, that strange steel. “What are you doing here in disguise?”

 

He laughed - a little, and then a lot, because  _ really _ . “Oh Molly,” he said. “You are - you are just a _ dor _ able, don’t you know that?”

 

She stared. And stared. The steel was gone, and he thought she would be better if she were very pretty or very ugly. It was that colorless in between which so repulsed him. “Can I -” she said, and stalled, the fat worm of her tongue writhing senselessly in her mouth, and please, god, just stop, just give up - on that sentence, on this conversation, on, ideally, breathing oxygen. “Do you need help, Jim?”

 

And he said: Well. Actually. He didn’t say anything, not just yet, because he hadn’t really altogether  anticipated her saying that. “What?”

 

“You seem sort of shook up.” She blinked, the dark circles under eyes deepening as she frowned and looked him up and down again. “I know it didn’t really work out between us and, um, I’m sorry about that but, um, if you need to get a coffee or something.” She stopped the sentence there, her mouth taut and helpless. 

 

“Why are you crying?”

 

She flinched a little, her small hands scrabbling at her flabby cheeks to smear away her tears like it served any purpose at all. “Oh, just, you know. Sherlock. He can be a bit of a git.” She laughed - once, a wheeze of air from a punctured tire.

 

He flicked his ears a little, his whiskers bristling, and his mouth curled up in a small smile that was real. “I’ll kill him for ya, love.”

 

She huffed and shook her head. “No, honestly. It’s my own fault for being so…” she trailed off for a moment. “Boring, I guess,” she said, and made that weak laugh again.

 

Well, he thought, you’ve got me there, and laughed again. She did not get the joke and looked at him half in humour and half in wariness.  _ Not nearly wary enough, my little mouse _ . “No coffee,” he said. He stepped forward and she stepped back. He spun around her, dancer quick, and she stiffened like a bowstring snapped back. Ready to fire. “But thanks, love. And - Molly?”

 

She turned to him sharply, her eyes tightening. Ah. There it was, that quicksilver gleam. Sherlock, he was sure, had never seen that. Sherlock did not know. This did not belong to Sherlock - this was for him, only for him, and oh, wasn’t that just grand? His own little steel-boned mousie. Maybe, after all this business was finished, he might…

 

But no. Of course not. It was nice thought, though, and he laughed again, his small little laugh that was real. “It wasn’t meant to be between us, darling. I guess I’m not really your type.” He gave her a big shark smile.

 

She blinked. Stared and stared. And - for a moment, just a moment, it was like she - like she - but no. That couldn’t be.

 

It was like she  _ saw. _

 

“I guess,” she said, very softly. 

 

He blinked. Turned, walked away. Thought. Of course, always thinking; but usually just his cat thoughts. Now, though, he thought a human thought. 

 

He flipped his phone open and typed:

 

CHANGE OF PLANS: NO SHOOTING HOOPS TONIGHT LADS, SOZ.

JIM XO

 

Three was enough, after all. Mustn’t be  _ greedy _ . He swooped sideways into the hospital as he flipped his phone shut. Back to business: he had a date with a very naughty mouse. He laughed as he pressed the button for the lift, and smiled his small smile, and walked his cat walk. 


End file.
